Finalist for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Award nominee for best new play

In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) is a full-length dramatic comedy by Sarah Ruhl.
A play about sex, intimacy, and equality, set in the 1880s, when
enthusiasm for the electric light bulb gave rise to a handy new
instrument to treat female hysteria.

Set in the 1880s at the dawn of the age of electricity and based on
the bizarre historical fact that doctors used vibrators to treat
'hysterical' women (and some men), the play centers on a doctor and his
wife and how his new therapy affects their entire household.

In a seemingly perfect, well-to-do Victorian home, proper gentleman
and scientist Dr. Givings has innocently invented an extraordinary new
device for treating "hysteria" in women (and occasionally men): the
vibrator. Adjacent to the doctor's laboratory, his young and energetic
wife tries to tend to their newborn daughter — and wonders exactly what
is going on in the next room. When a new "hysterical" patient and her
husband bring a wet nurse and their own complicated relationship into
the doctor's home, Dr. and Mrs. Givings must examine the nature of their
own marriage, and what it truly means to love someone.

Cast: 4 women, 3 men

What people say:

"Best Broadway Play of 2009 ... Ruhl
has defied gender and genre orthodoxy to give us a hilarious and moving
meditation on the many factors that complicate communication between
(and within) the sexes." — USA Today

"In the Next Room is Ruhl's best play to date. Her play-writing is inspired." — New Yorker

"Insightful, fresh and funny, the
play is as rich in thought as it is in feeling...one of the most gifted
and adventurous American playwrights to emerge in recent years ... In the Next Roomis
a true novelty: a sex comedy designed not for sniggering teenage boys —
or grown men who wish they were still sniggering teenage boys — but for
adults with open hearts and minds. Insightful, fresh and funny, the
play is as rich in thought as it is in feeling." — The New York Times

"It's safe to say that In the Next Room
goes where no Broadway show has gone before. Ruhl presents something a
lot more daring than nudity: women's discovery of their own bodies and
their own pleasure ... A play that's smart, delicate and very, very
funny." — New York Post

"Sarah Ruhl ... has
written a smart, charming, iridescently funny-serious jewel ... As Ruhl
traces it with wit and insight, and without the slightest prurience, the
birth of this new era gives rise to colorful events, astute
psychological revelations and endearingly apt dialogue." — Bloomberg

"The playwright mines her subject for
suitably bawdy humor without resorting to vulgarity. But what really
gives the work its distinction is its sensitive exploration of the
physical and emotional repression suffered by the women of the era,
which has yet to disappear entirely....The play beautifully balances its
humor and pathos." — Hollywood Reporter

Sarah Ruhl is one of America's most acclaimed and accomplished
young playwrights. A two-time Pulitzer prize finalist, MacArthur
Fellowship recipient, Tony award nominee and winner of several other
playwriting awards and nominations, she is known for charting complex
currents of desire and broaching weighty topics such as bereavement with
a light, whimsical touch.